Escaping The Stereotypes - Women Are Underrepresented In Tech But There Are Solutions

“Technology is no longer a male domain,” says Monica Eaton-Cardone, CIO and co-founder of the Chargeback Company. As advances in technology requires new thinking that only different backgrounds and experiences can offer, we need to escape these age-old stereotypes.”

Few would argue with those sentiments. Digital technology in particular is now so deeply embedded in all our lives that from a consumer perspective, there really is no gender divide - men and women are equally enthusiastic users of the services and functionality delivered by smartphones,tablets, smartphones and the rest.. In theory then, a digital tech industry that is addressing a huge female audience - let’s assume 50% total - with its products and services should also be employing a similar percentage of women.

Different Aspirations

But perhaps unsurprisingly, Britain’s tech industry is not doing that well when it comes to attracting women into its ranks. Witness a report published last week by Tech City - a body set up by then Prime Minister David Cameron to help digital startups grow more quickly - and prepared in collaboration with Hays Digital and the University of Sheffield. The report finds that a much smaller percentage of young women aspire to pursue careers in the tech sector than their male counterparts. To be more precise, more than a third of young men (36%) aspire to work in the tech sector compared with just 13% of women.

Basing their findings on interviews with 1,000 young people, augmented by an analysis of 80,000 posts on social media site Reddit, the researchers say the gender gap can be partly attributed to confidence issues. When asked why they weren’t attracted to a tech sector that most acknowledged offered good career prospects, women tended to say that they didn’t have the skills or felt they wouldn’t fit in.

UK women, have of course, made their mark as founders rather than simply as employees in the tech sector. But even then there are gender imbalances, not least in the ability of female-led companies to raise money. To coincide with International Women’s Day, the UK Business Angels Association pointing out that only 14% of business angels are women and just 27% of VC Fund staff. This is important because female investors are more likely to back female led companies. According to the UKBAA, 54% of female investors have backed at least one company founded by a woman. Only a very small percentage of male investors can say the same thing.

Solutions Not Problems

So the question is, how can Britain’s digital tech companies - many of them startups and early stage - attract more women into the industry? And it’s a question that might require a rapid answer, if and when Brexit curbs the flow of European talent into the UK.